Russian diplomats urged to ‘respect Japan law’ as 2,300 parking tickets remain unpaid

Vehicles registered with Russian diplomatic plates had accumulated more than 2,300 unpaid parking tickets in the five years to 2022, according to Japanese media

In 2021, the foreign ministry said it would refuse to provide petrol tax exemptions to foreign diplomats if they failed to pay their parking fines

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Published: 12:00pm, 28 Nov 2023

Russian diplomats are by far the worst offenders when it comes to paying parking fines in Japan, according to media reports, despite embassy staff being repeatedly summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and instructed to “respect Japanese law”.

According to Fuji News Network, vehicles carrying diplomatic plates identifying them as belonging to the Russian embassy in Tokyo, or one of its four consulates across the country, had accumulated 2,338 unpaid parking tickets in the five years to 2022.

Those cases accounted for 59 per cent of the total of outstanding fines among diplomatic vehicles, reported the news channel, which filed a freedom-of-information request with the National Police Agency to obtain the details.

China had the second-largest number of outstanding parking fines, with 246 cases, although that was a significant reduction from the 638 reported in 2021. Diplomats from Kazakhstan were the next worst offenders, followed by Egypt, Iran and Ukraine.

The report did not state the value of the outstanding parking fines, but when comparable figures were released in 2021, they showed that the 3,948 violations that were still outstanding came to around 40 million yen (US$268,000) in total.